> > Then, if you are willing to buy hardware as David Boyes outlined, you can > perhaps do it that way. I have no knowledge about these products, and we > have not tested that approach, so I do not know whether or not it works. If > someone has tried it, I'd be (academically, I'll admit) interesting in knowing
The “faketape” support for the ZPDT and friends is basically the same technology as the OMA/2, but done completely in software, so if you want to give it a whirl, find someone with a ZPDT. AWSTAPE files (a volume is a directory with files containing the same data as on physical carts and some metadata) were invented for the OMA/2, which looks like a really long 3422 volume to the host. The flexCUB box is able to emulate all sorts of devices, disk/tape/3270/etc. They’re really handy if you need to handle some obscure volume format on an older CPU - we recently reanimated a 4341 using one for all the I/O devices on that system. We bought a physical OMA/2 long long ago and kept running with a bus/tag to FICON converter. BusTech also made a similar box, but I don’t remember now whether there was ever an ESCON version. The OMA/2 supports CD and DVD media, albeit with a few manual hoops to select and mount the right “volume” on the emulated device. It’s one of the major reasons I wish ZPDT supported an emulated 3494 library controller device so I could finally retire that box. Today, I’d probably just try to find a desktop SCSI 3590, attach it to a stand-alone PC, and use the tape image utilities provided with Hercules to create a 3590 from AWSTAPE files on the DVD. Then, apply service as normal (or at least till IBM decides to remove the tape support code from SMP/E). It’d be really slick if IBM reanimated the OMA/2 device with a native FICON adapter, even if it was just for this purpose. The ability to emulate a range of mainframe devices on commodity hardware has been really, really useful over the years. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
